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Monday, March 01, 2010

Been a while since we've gone all Hot People here. The Olympics seem like a perfect excuse. For the most part I wanted to choose people who were perhaps less prominent in the games coverage (there will be no certain skater of Japanese descent here).

I am almost certain this is Meghan Agosta of the Canadian Women's Hockey Team. The ladies took a lot of guff for their choices in celebrating their gold medals. I think people should step the hell off. Any woman who can play like that and likes to drink a beer is OK in my book.

This is John Montgomery. He is also Canadian and he won the gold medal for skeleton. There are a number of truly mouth watering photos of him on the internet but none of those were available for me to steal.

Here we have Alexandre Bilodeau, rainmaker. He broke the Canadian home gold drought by winning the men's mogul competition. A sweeter boy would be difficult to find. Even in Canada.

In September J.R. Celski nearly died from a skate to the thigh in a short track speed skating race. He took to the ice in the Olympics for his first race since that crash and he came away from it all with a bronze medal.

Oh Julia Mancuso. Somehow you manage to wear a tiara and not make it look arrogant. Some may say she had some tough breaks this round of competition but she still came away with a medal so I say it's all good. I hope she does, too.

I caved on this one. If I had seen Shaun White seem at all arrogant or difficult or even stand offish I wouldn't have included him. He seems, though, to be a guy who really likes snow boarding and he is undeniably the very best at what he does. He is unapologetic about becoming a brand in and of himself but he also hasn't allowed that to make him an ass. So I included him because, man, that hair!

Shani Davis is my player of the games, though. Has anyone worked so hard and won so calmly as he? I searched and searched for a photo of him as he realized he'd won gold the first time this year. He was still skating his warm down lap, hands on knees, looking at the times and slowly an economical smile lit his face. He was proud and happy and just that small gesture was all we needed to see to know it.

Finally, of course, the goalie. Ryan Miller fought the good fight. The NHL has a number of truly phenomenal goalies and during these Olympic games Miller has proven himself to be a worthy member of that cadre. He took the USA's loss to Canada in the gold medal round very hard but rallied and seemed to enjoy and appreciate the closing ceremonies. I hope to see a lot more of him in the future.

3 comments:

I didn't watch a minute of it. One night, I thought I was watching some ice skating, but they kept talking about "when these kids get to Vancouver, blahbity blah" and I realized that I was watching months old qualifying tournaments.

I gotta go with Apolo Ohno. He's gorgeous, he's amazingly talented on those skates, and he is a gracious winner AND loser. Disqualified from a race and immediately shaking hands and congratulating the winners? Fabulous.

I didn't watch as much as I'd like, but my favorite olympians are 2 people whose names I don't even know - the Canadian pair who won the ice dancing gold medal. I'm not even a fan of ice dancing and I didn't watch their gold medal winning performance, but, by chance, I did watch the medal ceremony. I knew that no pair from North America had ever won the gold before. I know the US team was in the running for the gold, but ended up with silver. But the Canadian team was just incredibly giddy! I thought the woman was going to pee her pants she was so excited. They weren't gloating in any way, just excited beyond belief. There was none of the serious tears of US medal winners - just smiles and laughter and I'm-so-excited-I-can't-stand-still-ness. And everyone in the stands was just joyful and happy and enjoying the moment. You couldn't watch it without smiling! And this is my impression without even listening to the sound, as Little Seal wasn't asleep yet!